The common wisdom for adopting a hobby as an adult is to pick something you loved as a child and try that first. I went the other way. I wasn’t an outdoorsy kid. I didn’t love snakes as a child. In fact, I was terrified of them. But what I would add to the common wisdom on hobbies is: Pick something that would impress your childhood self. The fact that I walk right up to snakes now would definitely impress my childhood self.
I was an angsty teen but never felt like I had a good enough reason to feel so tortured. So I concocted wild fantasies in my head: What if I survived a plane crash? What if I survived an animal attack? In my early twenties after moving to Southern California, I became fixated on the idea of surviving a rattlesnake bite. That would give me a reason for all of these…feelings.
My interest in snakes as anything other than bit players in an immature fantasy was a very slow burn. When I arrived in Los Angeles, a Western fence lizard skittered across my window. Coming from Canada, where our amphibians were more of the frog and toad variety, I was entranced by these exotic creatures who looked like dinosaurs in miniature. I learned to distinguish different varieties of lizards, including alligator lizards, slightly larger than the common fence lizard, with long tails and slithery moves that closely resemble snakes. You could say lizards were my gateway drug to appreciating snakes.
The first time I saw a snake outdoors, I was chaperoning a weekend camping trip with my then fifth-grade daughter and her peers. We had crossed a stream and trekked along dirt trails in the hills of Pacific Palisades. As we returned to the lodge, a big black snake crossed our path, and I screamed right along with the girls. Didn’t snakes belong in terrariums—behind glass at the zoo?
A few years ago, I challenged myself to do 50 hikes in a year. These hikes provided plenty of time for observation of animals in their natural habitat. One day, I was on the phone with my daughter when I heard a hiss. I looked down to find a rattlesnake crossing my path, perilously close. I needed to pay attention, so I quickly hung up the phone. But rather than beating a hasty retreat, I proceeded to do a full-blown photo shoot of the snake. As they say “Pics, or it didn’t happen.” I craved evidence of my brush with a wild thing.
I’m neither an idiot nor a snake handler. When I take my snake pictures, it’s by zooming in with my iPhone, not physically getting too close. I do everything I can to stay out of the way of all wild animals: sticking to the middle of wide trails, not stepping too close to the brush, never wearing headphones, and listening to my surroundings. I have no respect for the RFK Jr.s of the world who use snake handling as some sort of evangelical macho display.
Learning about snakes has been key to my interest in them and enthusiasm to be living around them. I have come to appreciate and respect snakes, naturally shy creatures who will usually simply slither away if they see people approaching. Maybe I even relate to them; as an introvert, I tend towards shyness and have been known to slither away when people approach me too. When snake bites happen, it’s usually due to human harassment or stepping into a grassy area where they don’t see that the snake is resting. The snake reacts defensively; they’re not lying in wait, waiting to attack humans. They require warmth and sunshine, so sunbathing is a physical need as well as an opportunity to find their next meal: a rabbit or a lizard or a ground squirrel, keeping the rodent population in check. My increased exposure to snakes from hiking served as desensitization to the fear I had associated with them.
Collecting snake encounters taught me that I can surprise myself, with the biggest surprise being the knowledge that I can change. I was able to go from a person fearful of snakes to someone whose day is made simply by seeing one. I have become someone who can identify a rattlesnake from a gopher snake by the head alone. Fun fact: Rattlesnakes have a triangular head, with a body markedly less wide, and some other snakes have the ability to flatten their heads into triangles as a way of posturing as a more dangerous species.
When I set out to do 50 hikes in a year, I thought hiking was my new hobby. Hiking is a habit, but my hobby is collecting encounters with wild animals. That’s my real addiction. Anything that can connect me to the wildness in myself is worth exploration.
Kirsten Love writes about rare disease, medical mysteries, and parenting. She is currently finishing her memoir, Little Girls, about her daughters’ rare growth disorders. Substack @kirstenloveswriting and Instagram @ReadRunSew.
Great essay! I love stories about dealing with things that terrifiy us and why we are drawn to them.
That's a very cool essay. I like the way you concisely gave us the whole arc of the story.